MARDONIUS IN BOOTIA.-DELAYS OF THE SPARTANS.

273

advance farther, but to fix his quarters in Bo- | Cleombrotus, the brother of Leonidas, who exotia, which was well suited to the operations ercised the kingly functions during the minority of his army; and they held out to him the pros- of Pleistarchus, son of Leonidas, had been sent pect of effecting the conquest of Greece with- with an army to superintend the work. It was out striking a blow. The Greeks, they said, not quite finished when Mardonius took posseswere strong while they held together, but they sion of Athens. It seems to have been the demight be made to turn their arms against one sign of the Ephors, that when the wall should another. Let the Persian gold be distributed have been completed, and the peninsula should among the leading men in each city, and fac- thus have been secured from all fear of a sudtions would soon be raised everywhere, which den attack, Cleombrotus should lead his forces would save him the labour and the risk of against the Persians. But an eclipse of the sieges and battles. Perhaps the advice was sun, which happened while he was consulting not wholly neglected; but Mardonius had sev- the victims on the issue of his expedition. terrieral motives for pursuing his march into Attica. fied him so that he returned home with his He wished to make himself master of Athens, army; and he soon after died, leaving a son of for the sake of his credit with Xerxes, who mature age, named Pausanias, who succeeded was still at Sardis, whither he designed to con- to the guardianship of his cousin Pleistarchus. vey the news by beacons over the islands of In the mean time the Athenians sent an embasthe Egean. He was also not without hopes of sy to Sparta, in which they were joined by Mebending the obstinacy of the Athenians, when gara and Platæa, to remonstrate on the indiftheir country and city were in his possession, ference and neglect with which their zeal and to accept the terms which they had rejected constancy had been requited, and to call for aswhile his invasion was uncertain. He there- sistance to rid Attica of the barbarians. The fore proceeded, and he found no obstacle on his ambassadors found the Spartans engaged, as if way at Athens only the deserted walls. The they had no more pressing business, in celeinhabitants had retired to Salamis, when they brating the great Amyclæan festival, the Hyasaw that they had no protection to expect from cinthia. They laid their complaints before the the Peloponnesians. Ten months after its cap- Ephors; reminded them of the offers which the ture by Xerxes, Athens fell into the hands of Athenians had received from the Persians, and Mardonius. which were not yet recalled; of the promises He immediately sent a Greek named Mury- of succour which Sparta had given while she chides over to Salamis to renew the proposals trembled for Peloponnesus, and had forgotten he had before made through Alexander. The when she began to feel secure behind the newenvoy was introduced into the council, and de-ly-built walls. Athens, they said, was justly livered his message. Only one voice among indignant at this desertion; yet the Spartans the councillors recommended compliance. The might still repair their fault by promptly seekname of the wretched man was Lycidas: He- ing the enemy at Attica, where they would find rodotus suspects, with reason, that he had sold him in the Thriasian plain. himself to the Persians; mere pusillanimity would scarcely have given him courage enough to defy public opinion. He paid dearly for his rashness: his colleagues heard him with indignation; the report of his false or base counsel soon spread among the multitude that surround-by military preparations: the march of their ed the doors of the council chamber, and he was stoned to death. Murychides was suffered to go unhurt. The Athenian women, when they heard of the crime and the punishment of Lycidas, were seized with a similar fury, but, unhappily, vented it against innocent objects. They rushed in a body to his house, and imitated the example of their husbands and brothers by destroying his wife and children.*

While the Athenians, a second time driven from their homes, were giving these proofs of their inflexible resolution, the Spartans, lately so concerned about their intentions, seemed to have wholly forgotten their danger. The news of the approach of Mardonius, instead of hastening the march of a Spartan army for the protection of Athens, only quickened the hands that were employed in fortifying the Isthmus.

It is somewhat perplexing to find this incident related by Demosthenes (Cor, p. 296) of one Cyrsilus, whom, as it would appear from the comparison he draws, he conceiv ed to have excited the anger of his countrymen by opposing Themistocles the year before, when he proposed the evacnation of Attica. It can scarcely be doubted that the orator alludes to the same occurrence which the historian describes. Perhaps the easiest solution of the difficulty would be to suppose that Lycidas had also been called Cyrsius, a name which might imply that he had already made himself odiaus or contemptible by overbearing manners. See Welck cr, Theogms, p. xxxiii.

VOL. I.-M

The Ephors deferred their answer till the morrow, and the sacred festival afforded them a pretext for protracting the delay. Perhaps it was also the principal motive of their conduct. They were unwilling to interrupt the holyday season

troops would have begun under an unfavourable omen, and, as Attica could no longer be saved, they might think that nothing would be gained by breaking through their ordinary rules. The wall across the Isthmus, too, though far advanced, had not, it appears, quite come to an end when the Athenians arrived in Sparta. The return of Cleombrotus, though this is not expressly mentioned, seems to have happened during their stay there. But whatever may have been the motives or intentions of the Ephors, they deemed it absolutely necessary to keep the Athenians in the dark, and preferred to run the risk of losing their alliance rather than disclose their designs before it was time to carry them into effect. The patience of the envoys grew more and more weary as they were continually put off, during ten days, from morrow to morrow. The Arcadian Cheileus, who happened to be in Sparta, and to whom they probably expressed their resentment, is said to have been the person who convinced

* Mueller, Prolegom., p. 409, supposes Cleombrotus to have died the year before (B.C. 480), having led away his army soon after the eclipse, which took place October 2d. But the language of Herodotus, ix., 8-10, conveys a different impression, which seems to have been also Mr. Clinton's, F. H., 11., p. 209, who fixes the death of Cleombrotus in he year B.C. 479.

doubt, impatient of the delay, the cause of which they only learned on the return of their envoys, and the rumours which must be sup posed to have sprung up during this interval might easily continue afloat, even after the truth had been ascertained; and, as the jealousy between the two rival states increased, might more and more usurp the place of his

Several reasons determined Mardonius not to await the approach of Pausanias, nor to fight a battle in Attica. The nature of the ground was unfavourable to the movements of his cav

the Ephors of the imprudence of sporting with the feelings of so valuable an ally. Unless, however, we imagine that their plans had not before been fixed, it can scarcely be conceived that they were much affected by his counsels. It was probably not before every motive of delay had ceased that they at last ordered Pausanias to put himself at the head of the army5000 Spartans, attended each by seven Helots-tory. which they meant to send into the field; for, according to Herodotus, they were so careless about the suspense in which they kept the envovs, that they prolonged it when no end could emain to be answered by it. Instead of hasten-alry, the arm on which he principally relied. ing to announce to the impatient strangers that their troops were about to march, they sent Pausanias away in the night, and did not even make known his departure till the next day, when the Athenians wrung the singular secret from thein by declaring that their patience was spent, and that they would forthwith return home. They at the same time threatened that Athens, since she had no hope of succour from Sparta, would throw herself into the arms of the Persians. Then the Ephors revealed the truth. They were ready to swear that their army was already on its march; and they thought it must by this time be in Arcadia." The envoys could scarcely believe what they heard, and when they were convinced that the Spartan gravity was capable of descending to so poor a jest, they set out in all haste to follow Pausanias. They were accompanied by a body of 5000 heavy-armed men, the flower of the provincial Lacedæmonians.

Such is the account given of this transaction by Herodotus; but it represents the conduct of the Ephors as so capricious and so childish, that, when we consider how easily occurrences that took place at Sparta might be subsequently distorted and discoloured at Athens, we can scarcely avoid suspecting that the real state of the case may have been less disgraceful to the Spartans than it appears according to this view of it. If Cleombrotus brought his army back during the ten days that the envoys were detained, his illness and death, and the appointment of the new commander-in-chief, might render so long a delay unavoidable, and the departure of Pausanias, instead of having been deferred to the last moment, may have taken place at the very first that admitted of it. Yet it may have been at last both sudden and secret; but not because it was the result of a newly-adopted policy, and still less for the sake of a paltry and most unreasonable jest. Herodotus relates a fact, which may have had some share in hastening it, and which at the same time proves that nothing was uncertain about it except the time. Argos, if the historian was correctly informed, had been solicited by Mardonius to make a diversion in his favour: perhaps he had adopted the advice of the Thebans, and had corrupted some of her leading men; publicly or privately he had received assurances that the Argives would prevent the Spartans from sending an army against him. We do not hear how they purposed to effect this; and it may have been an empty boast, yet intelligence of such a design might reach Sparta, and quicken the movements of Pausanias. In the mean while the Athenians at Salamis were, no

If defeated, he would be compelled to retreat through narrow and difficult passes, and would be in danger of losing his whole army; and should his stay be lengthened, he would find great difficulty in providing for its subsistence He therefore resolved on falling back upon Boeotia, where he would be favoured by the nature of the country, and by the neighbourhood of a friendly city. Until the eve of his departure he had not given up all hopes of gaining over the Athenians, and he had, therefore, abstained from doing any damage to their territory, that they might be tempted by the prospect of saving their still unwasted fields and dwellings; but when the moment of retreat was come, and no end could be served by sparing them any longer, he gave the reins to hav oc and plunder, ravaged the land, and consumed and destroyed whatever had been left standing of buildings, sacred or profane, in the former invasion. He had already set out on nis march, when he received intelligence that a body of 1000 Spartans had pushed forward before the main army to Megara. Hoping to surprise and destroy them, he took the road towards that city, and scoured the Megarian plain with his horse. This was the farthest point to which the Persian arms were ever carried in this quarter; it was, probably, in this expedition that the temple of Eleusis was either first committed to the flames or utterly wasted and ruined. News came to him, before he had reached Megara, that Pausanias, with all his forces, had arrived at the Isthmus; and he now thought it advisable to commence his retreat without delay. He did not, however, take the direct road to Boeotia, but bent his way eastward, and, passing by Decelea, crossed Parnes, and came down into the lower vale of the Asopus. The object of this circuit was probably the better quarters to be found at Tanagra, where he halted for the night. The next day he crossed to the right bank of the Asopus, and pursued his march up the valley to the outlet of the defile, through which the high road from Athens to Thebes descends to the northern foot of Citharon. Near this outlet, at the roots of the mountain, stood the towns of Hysiæ and Erythræ, between which the road appears to have passed. On the plain between Erythræ, the easternmost of the two, and the river, Mardonius pitched his camp. Here he expected that the enemy, entering Boeotia by the passes of Citharon, would overtake and give him battle. He wished for an early opportunity of fighting, but he was not so confident in his strength as to disdain taking precautions against the consequences of a defeat. He enclosed a

their city, and now accompanied the Greeks, but were without arms; and though they might render some useful services in the camp, appear to have had no place in the field. Of the Lacedæmonians, the Athenians furnished the largest body, 8000 men; the Plateans could only muster 600. After the Athenians, Corinth raised the most considerable force; she herself armed 5000 men, and she drew succours not only from her western colonies, Leucas. Anactorium, and Ambracia, but also from Potidea, which proved its good-will by sending a band of 300. Megara and Sicyon furnished each 3000; Tegea half that number; Orchomenus, which mustered 600, was the only Ar

space of upward of a mile square with a rampart surmounted by a palisade, and flanked with wooden towers, to guard his treasure and to afford a refuge, if it should be needed, from a superior enemy. While this work was proceed-rest, 38,700 were men of arms next to the ing, he accepted an invitation from Attaginus, who entertained him and fifty of his officers with a splendid banquet at Thebes. To show the fraternal harmony that subsisted between the Persians and their Greek allies, Attaginus at the same time invited fifty of his fellow-citizens, and arranged his guests so that there should be one of each nation on every couch. Herodotus himself afterward met with one of the Greeks who were present, and heard from him that the Persian who had shared his couch had privately disclosed to him the gloomy fore-cadian state that took a part in the expedition; bodings with which he looked forward to the approaching conflict. If we may believe this anecdote, many of the Persian officers foresaw its fatal issue, and considered themselves as victims whom Mardonius had sacrificed to his desperate ambition.

All the Greeks north of the Isthmus, who owned the Persian sway, had joined in the invasion of Attica except the Phocians. They, too, had promised to send a re-enforcement to the Persian army; but, either through unavoidable delays or aversion to the service into which they were pressed, their troops, a thousand men, did not arrive till after the return of Mardonius to Thebes. When he heard of their coming, he sent some horsemen to order them to station themselves in the plain, apart from the rest of the army. As soon as they had done so, the whole of the Persian cavalry rode up and began to encircle them. The Greeks, who looked on at a distance, expected forthwith to see them fall beneath the Persian javelins; they themseves deemed their fate certain. Harmocydes, their commander, bade them prepare for the worst: their enemies, the Thessalians, he said, had probably instigated the Persians to massacre them; he exhorted them to die, not like a tame herd, but as brave men, who had arms in their hands, and could sell their lives dearly. They closed their ranks, and formed into a circle, and, in a defensive attitude, awaited the threatened charge. The Persians rode up and levelled their javelins; one or two actually hurled them, but the rest suddenly wheeled round and rode away. Mardonius wished it to be thought that the scene was only meant to try the courage of the Phocians: he sent, soon after, and applauded their dauntless spirit. The Phocians believed that it had really saved their

among the rest, the greater part came from the towns of Argolis; Træezen could raise 1000; but the united forces of Mycena and Tiryns amounted to no more than 400. The lightarmed troops were 69,500 strong; for, besides the 35,000 Helots who attended the Spartans, each man of arms in the rest of the army was accompanied by one light-armed; and some small bodies which came from the Lacedæmonian colony of Melos, from Ceos, and Tenos, Naxos, and Cythnus, were probably equipped in a similar manner, and hence have been omitted in the list of Herodotus, though they earned a place for their names in the monument at Olympia, which recorded the cities that shared the glory of this great contest.* The numbers of the Persian army more than tripled that of the Greeks. Xerxes, as we have seen, had left behind 300,000 of his best troops, and the Macedonian and Greek auxiliaries are estimated by Herodotus at 50,000 more. Plutarch has, perhaps, recorded an Athenian or a Platæan tradition, which was not generally current, when he relates that Aristides obtained an ambiguous oracle from Delphi, promising victory to the Athenians if they sacrificed to the local gods, nymphs, and heroes, and if they joined battle in the plain of the Eleusinian goddesses in their own land. The legend ran, that while Aristides was perplexed by the terms which seemed to enjoin a retreat to Eleusis, the Plataæan general Arimnestus was guided by a nocturnal vision to the discovery of an ancient temple dedicated to the Eleusinian goddesses, which stood near Hysia, at the foot of Citharon, on ground excellently suited to the purpose of protecting infantry from the attacks of a superior cavalry, and that the Plateans, by a decree, ordered the landmarks which parted their country from Attica to be removed, that the Athenians might The Spartan army, on its arrival at the Isth-be able to fight on their own ground without remus, was joined by the forces of all the Pelo-crossing Citharon. It is added, that when the ponnesian allies, and continued its march along the coast into Attica. At Eleusis it was met by an Athenian re-enforcement under the command of Aristides; it then took the road across Citharon, and coming down upon Erythræ, discovered the Persians encamped on the plain near the banks of the Asopus. Near Erythræ Pausanias halted, and formed his line on the uneven ground at the foot of the mountain. His whole force, which consisted wholly of infantry, amounted to nearly 110,000 men: that number is said to have been completed by 1800 Thespians, who had survived the destruction of

lives.

Macedonian conqueror restored Platea, he declared by a solemn proclamation at Olympia, that he thus rewarded the Plateans for the magnanimity with which they had surrendered their territory for the service of Greece. It may have been this proclamation misunderstood which gave occasion to that part of the story which relates to the absolute union of territory between Athens and Platea: a fact quite inconsistent with their subsequent history. Mardonius, on perceiving the Greeks, waited

* See Broendsted, Reisen, p. 105.

from their ranks to gaze upon the gigantic barbarian.

for a time in expectation that they would descend and give him battle in the plain. At length, seeing that they did not move from their This success encouraged Pausanias to leave position on the rugged skirts of the mountain, his position at the outlet of the pass for one he ordered his cavalry to go up and attack where his army, though more exposed to the them. Masistins, the commander of the caval-attacks of the enemy's cavalry, would, among ry, was an officer of high rank, second only to other advantages, be better supplied with water Mardonius himself, and of great personal rep-than in the neighbourhood of the Erythræ. utation. He rode up at the head of his troops, With this view, he descended into the territory distinguished from the rest by his Nisæan char- of Platea. The town itself, which had not yet ger, and by the gold that glittered in his armour, risen from its ruins, lay about two miles off to and in the caparisons of his fiery steed. The the west, near the foot of the mountain. The Greeks were, for the most part, protected by the plain before it is watered by a number of small broken ground on which they were posted; but streams from the side of Citharon; some of that which the Megarians occupied was more them feed the Asopus, which, after it has colexposed, and they, consequently, had to bear lected these and other tributaries, takes an the brunt of the charge. Troop after troop as- easterly direction towards the Euboean chansailed them in succession, and allowed them no nel: others go to form the Eroe, which, rising breathing time; their ranks were rapidly thin- in the same elevated plain, flows through a narned by the missiles of the enemy, and their row glen at the western foot of Citharon into strength and spirits began to fail. In this dis- the Gulf of Creusis (Livadostro). Pausanias tress they sent to Pausanias to beg that he now posted himself on the bank of a stream would immediately detach a force for their re- which Herodotus calls the Asopus, but which lief, without which they could no longer keep must be considered as only one of its tributaries their station. It was a service of extraordina- running northward to join the main channel. ry difficulty and danger; and Pausanias scru- The right wing of the army, which, as the post pled to exercise his authority by selecting one of honour, was occupied by the Lacedæmodivision from the rest to engage in it; but he nians, was near a spring called Gargaphia, from called upon those who were willing to earn which it drew a plentiful supply of water. honour freely to undertake it. While the rest Before the troops could be arrayed in the orhesitated, an Athenian officer, named Olympio- der which they were to preserve in the day of dorus, offered, with his battalion of 300 men battle, the Lacedæmonians were called upon to and a body of archers, to cover the Megarians. decide a dispute between the Tegeans and the He hastened to their assistance, and received Athenians, who each claimed the left wing, the the charge of the enemy with a well-directed place second in honour. The Tegeans groundshower of arrows. Masistius was still fore-ed their pretensions on the exploit of their anmost; his horse was wounded in the side, reared, and threw its rider. The Athenians rushed forward and fell upon him before he could rise from the ground. His scaly armour* for a time resisted their weapons; at length he was pierced with a shaft of a javelin through the visor of his helmet. In the tumult of the charge his fall was not observed, and no attempt was made to rescue him; but when the assailants, having wheeled round and retired, discovered their loss, they spontaneously rushed forward to recover the body of their slain chief. The Greeks, seeing the Athenians exposed to the shock of this overwhelming force, moved on to their assistance. They came up as the little band had been compelled to resign the body; but they renewed the struggle, and wrested it from the Persians. After a sharp conflict, the cavalry was repulsed with some slaughter, and having halted at the distance of a couple of furlongs, thought it advisable to return with the mournful tidings to the camp. The whole army testified its grief at the event by funeral honours such as were paid only to the most illustrious dead. They shaved not only their own heads, but their horses and beasts of burden; and they set up a wailing, which, Herodotus says, resounded throughout all Boeotia. The Greeks, though their loss probably exceeded that of the Persians, were consoled and animated by their final triumph, and especially by the death of an enemy whom his countrymen so deeply deplored. His body was placed in a cart, which was drawn along the lines, and the men ran out In which, according to Plutarch, he was cased from head to foot. Arist., 14.

cient hero Echemus, who, they asserted, had been rewarded by the Peloponnesians for his victory over Hyllus by the privilege granted forever to his people, of occupying one wing in all common expeditions made by the cities of the peninsula. To the Lacedæmonians they were willing to yield; but they insisted that as well ancient usage as the valour they had shown in so many contests with the Spartans themselves entitled them to precedence over all the other allies. The Athenians also, in urging their claim, did not forget their mythical glories: their defence of the Heracleids against the power of Eurystheus, the succours with which they had successfully taken up the cause of the defeated Argives against the Cadmeans, and their victory over the Amazons. They needed not, however, as they truly said, to allege the exploits of their ancestors; the field of Marathon had been witness to one equal to any in the days of yore: on this they were content to let their right rest. Yet, they added, as the juncture was one that forbade all contention, they would submit to the decision of the Spartans, and would endeavour to do honour to any post that should be assigned to them.

The spirit of Aristides seems to speak in this language: the modesty of the Athenians pleaded in their favour, perhaps, as much as their merit; and the Lacedæmonian army exclaimed, as one man, that they were the most wor thy. Mardonius, as soon as he was apprized of the movement of the Greeks, advanced with all his forces. which he drew up on the opposite bank of the Asopus. He stationed the Persians, as his best troops, in the left wing to face the